MusicophiliaNATIONAL BESTSELLER • With the same trademark compassion and erudition he brought to The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks explores the place music occupies in the brain and how it affects the human condition. “Powerful and compassionate. . . . A book that not only contributes to our understanding of the elusive magic of music but also illuminates the strange workings, and misfirings, of the human mind.” —The New York Times In Musicophilia, he shows us a variety of what he calls “musical misalignments.” Among them: a man struck by lightning who suddenly desires to become a pianist at the age of forty-two; an entire group of children with Williams syndrome, who are hypermusical from birth; people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans; and a man whose memory spans only seven seconds-for everything but music. Illuminating, inspiring, and utterly unforgettable. |
Contents
Imagery and Imagination | |
Brainworms Sticky Music and Catchy Tunes | |
Musical Hallucinations | |
A Range of Musicality | |
Amusia and Dysharmonia | |
Aphasia and Music Therapy | |
Dyskinesia and Cantillation | |
Music and Tourettes Syndrome | |
Rhythm and Movement | |
Parkinsons Disease and Music Therapy | |
The Case of the OneArmed Pianist | |
Musicians Dystonia | |
Emotion Identity and Music | |
Absolute Pitch | |
Cochlear Amusia | |
Why We Have Two Ears | |
Musical Savants | |
Music and Blindness | |
Synesthesia and Music | |
Memory Movement and Music | |
Music and Amnesia | |
Musical Dreams | |
Music Madness and Melancholia | |
Music and the Temporal Lobes | |
Dementia and Music Therapy | |
Acknowledgments | |
About the Author | |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
ability able absolute pitch activity Alzheimer’s amnesia amusia Anthropologist on Mars aphasia asked auditory autism automatic basal ganglia Bellugi blind brain brainworms cerebral Cicoria Clive cognitive colleagues color composer concert consciousness cortex cortical damage dancing Daniel Levitin David deafness Deborah described developed disease disorder distortions dreams dystonia emotional experience feeling fingers frontotemporal dementia functional heard hearing loss hemisphere imagine instruments language listen to music lost melody memory Michael Torke mind motor movement Mozart music therapy musical hallucinations musical imagery Musicophilia neural neurological neurologist never normal notes one’s parkinsonian parkinsonism patients perception performance perhaps pianist piano piece playing power of music problems procedural memory professional musicians recognize remember repetition Return to text rhythm rhythmic Schlaug seemed seizures sense sensory singing sometimes songs sort sound speech started strange synesthesia synesthetic temporal lobe thought tone Tourette’s tune visual weeks Williams syndrome wondered wrote York Zatorre